refractory cement

They say that if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing right. Those are good words to live by, but here at Hackaday we occasionally like to adhere to a slight variation of that saying: “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing”. So when we saw the incredible amount of work and careful research [Rob Linnaeus] was doing just to roast coffee beans, we knew he was onto something.

The heart of his coffee roaster is a vortex chamber with an opening on the side for a standard heat gun, and an aperture in the top where an eight cup flour sifter is to be placed. [Rob] modeled the chamber in Fusion 360 and verified its characteristics using RealFlow’s fluid simulation. He then created a negative of the chamber and printed it out on his Monoprice Maker Select 3D printer.

He filled the mold with a 1:1 mix of refractory cement and perlite, and used the back of a reciprocating saw to vibrate the mold as it set so any air bubbles would rise up to the surface. After curing for a day, [Rob] then removed the mold by heating it and peeling it away. Over the next several hours, the cast piece was fired in the oven at increasingly higher temperatures, from 200 °F all the way up to 500 °F. This part is critical, as trapped water could otherwise turn to steam and cause an explosion if the part was immediately subjected to high temperatures. If this sounds a lot like the process for making a small forge, that’s because it basically is. Continue reading “The Fine Art of Heating And Cooling Your Beans”→

[amazingdiyprojects] has been working on a 3D printable jet engine. You may remember seeing a 3D printed jet engine grace our front page back in October. That one was beautiful didn’t function. This one flips those values around. [amazingdiyprojects] seems to make a living from selling plans for his projects, so naturally most of the details of the build are hidden from us. But from what we can see in the video clips there are some really interesting solutions here.

Some of the parts appear to be hand-formed sheet metal. Others are vitamins like bearings and an electric starter. We really liked the starter mechanism, pressing in the motor to engage with a spline, or perhaps by friction, to give the starting rotation.

What really caught our attention was casting the hot parts of the printer in refractory cement using a 3D printed mold. It reminds us of the concrete lathes from World War 1. We wonder what other things could be built using this method? Flame nozzles for a foundry? A concrete tea-kettle. It’s pretty cool.

We’re interested to see how the jet engine performs and how others will improve on the concept. Video of it in action after the break.